| Show DESERET THE philological aW contributor to the editorial columns column sot of the tribune has a peculiar way of accounting for the word deseret he assumes that joseph smith coined the word and that the materials used were the english word desert and an e interpolated between the last two let letters terIL the assumption is so puerile that it ought perhaps to be treated in anything but a serious vein what possie t ble object could joseph smith have in coining a word for bee more than fw for s anything else mentioned in the sl context none whatever but bat A J it if there were any such ob eject can anybody believe that he be would have made so clumsy an attempt as the slight alteration of desert deser tN to Il deseret is and thereby subject the whole book to just J suspicion the idea must be rejected by VA all who wha give the subject any thoughtful consideration the philological expert of the claims that the let et which ia the terminal of deseret is a diminutive and can have no other possible effect 12 he therefore decides with oracular wisdom and dogmatic as that Il deseret deveret means nothing else than little desert by this inflexible Tri bunish rule carpet means meana nothing else than a little carp bucket little buck bullet a little bull cornet a little cort gullet a little guu gull J f socket a little sock racket a littles rack etc we might give a long of words with the terminal et in which the tribune writers terIs rule has no apall aepli cation or would appear as nonsense but let us look at the matter in a more serious way from the bookoff book of ether where deseret first occurs we gather that it is a word handed down from a long 1 lost language it was found in the I 1 records of ether who translated it inep the vernacular tongue of his people and by moroni who abridged the re J cords of ether both the original IP and the interpretation were given y and thus found their way into the english translation of those sacre sacred re records cordiL this is what is claimed fur I 1 it t ether was a descendant of jared who with his bis brother and some other families came from the plains of after ader the building of the tower it to is therefore to be concluded a priori that the word is a a derivative from some root which would be found in the language used before the 4 confusion 0 0 D fusion of tongues but bu t this al tongue is oat lost and there is no or ordinary dinay means whereby the word cap can be identified as belonging to the vocal of that language this fact would seem to end the con tro versy veray putting it beyond the ground of evidence and leaving it only ayan as a matter of faith to the dira discretion of the reader of the bookoff book of ether to believe or reject the statement that addi desere fc means a bee but fortunately there is very strong evidence of af the genuineness of the word and faith is in in this case supported by facts the Bhe languages have preserved many roots of the original tongue an evidence of this is found in the fact that the proper nouns of the first chapter of genesis have a dig dia ctet signification in hebrew and ex plain the reason why they were given what is true of the proper boans applies with equal trinity to common nouns many distinguished scholars have enter calmed the opinion that hebrew was identical with the original tongue supposing now that deseret 9 is a word handed down from the people who spoke the original tongue through the descendants ot of jared it would be reasonable to expect that some trace of it ft might still be found among the languages retaining both a recognizable form and a similar signi signification fl to the original if such a form can be found it indicates the genuineness of the word deseret 1 1 and the authenticity of the record in which it occurs eurs benow we now turn to the arabic language the richest of all the Joh dialects and find that one of the words used to designate bee and be beehive beh hive lve is in so similar to the word deseret 11 as to warrant the conclusion that both have a common origin the arabic amble word referred to may be represented by the english letters abeld the meaning to is given by any good dictionary abe first letter of this word isain which to is no vowel at all but a guttural sound for which there is no equivalent representation at all in ED english gliSh L and aad r are easily interchangeable A native of the orient would probably pronounce aronou nee 4 eret I 1 deselee de Ide selet thereby pointing out the way whereby in the evolution of the languages the original deserea dese ref might have become a selet in the arabic that the word is still found in the orient and in so slightly modified a form and retain retaining irig its ite original signification is a proof no mere conjecture can invalidate the variation which is noticeable between od its arabic sister word to is nothing more than what Is ie found in a great number of words the derivations of which are known the greek meter latin mater french more mere german mutter english anglish mother swedish are all the same word mod modified I 1 bed accord 1 ing to the genius of the respective languages the arabic tha ao icelandic aa a german der swedish fen den are the english um the has become tent in english but felt in ID swedish and in german instances of this kind are numerous we have no doubt that were the subject further inquired into the word 11 deseret dee eret could be traced very nearly to its ancient source with as much certainty as any other word of similar antiquity ty |
